Woodlands for Wales

In 2018, we published the latest version of Woodlands for Wales, our 50 year strategy for woodlands and trees in Wales.

The strategy outlines Welsh Government’s vision and targets for Wales’ trees, woodlands and forest. It is built around 4 strategic themes:

• responding to climate change
• woodlands for people
• a competitive and integrated forest sector
• environmental quality

In June 2021 the Deputy Minister for Climate Change, Lee Waters, held a deep dive exercise. The purpose was to identify and prioritise a set of actions to:

• increase tree planting, and
• overcome barriers related to:
  1. woodland creation. This takes account of the challenging levels of tree planting needed to address climate change
  2. use of Welsh timber in construction and the need to de-carbonise Welsh housing
  3. encouraging community tree planting

During the deep dive, a task force made of experts worked together.They developed the Trees and Timber Task Force: recommendations to drive change. The recommendations set out our current priorities. They will contribute to meeting the Woodlands for Wales Strategy.

The Woodlands for Wales Indicators reports measure our progress towards the high level outcomes described in Woodlands for Wales.

The 23 indicators cover changes in the area and nature of Welsh woodlands and trees. They also monitor the goods and services they deliver.

The latest report includes:

• data sources
• the desired trend for each indicator
• baseline information, where available
• commentary setting out relevance, key points and any notes to give context to the data